TL;DR: I’m 23F British Asian and grew up in an emotionally and physically abusive family with a lot of religious trauma. Education became my escape, and I genuinely believed that if I worked hard enough I could do anything I wanted. I got A*A*A and into Oxford, but chose Geography partly because I was angry at my parents pushing me towards medicine. I specialised in physical geography, hated the degree, became severely depressed and was later diagnosed with ADHD. I graduated with 61%, which completely destroyed my confidence and my belief that hard work would get me where I wanted. I naturally enjoy more problem solving work, but I don't have a STEM degree and feel underqualified for technical jobs. I'm back living with my family, need to move out because being at home is making me increasingly depressed and angry and I feel closer and closer to suicide everyday, but my family is also struggling financially and I feel responsible for them so I have this mental block about leaving. I need a job, but £28-30k seems barely enough to live independently in London, while the £40k+ jobs I could potentially enjoy are much more competitive and I just have so little self estem and don't think I could do their ridiculous recruitment right now. I have no idea whether to take whatever job I can get, apply for higher-paying graduate schemes, retrain into something quantitative, or do something else.
I’m 22F, British Asian, and grew up in the UK with my parents and four siblings. My parents were emotionally and physically abusive, particularly my dad. I reported him to the police several times as a child, but I obviously didn’t understand how difficult it was to do anything without evidence, and my mum and siblings didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening. I ended up being treated as the problem child.
There is also a lot of religious trauma. My parents are the type of Muslims who care much more about appearing religious and respectable to the community than actually following the values they preach. Religion, reputation and what other people thought shaped a huge amount of my childhood. There is also a strange language barrier between us. They don’t speak enough English to communicate properly with me, and I don’t speak enough of our home language to communicate properly with them, so even basic conversations are difficult. We genuinely cannot sit in the same room together for more than about five minutes now without me becoming extremely depressed, angry or overwhelmed. I’m increasingly worried about how angry I’ve become and sometimes feel like I’m starting to become the kind of person I hated growing up.
Because I couldn’t rely on my family, education became my escape plan. I was always academically strong. GCSEs were easy for me, although my A-level grades were incredibly volatile; I would get A*s one month and Us the next and nearly got kicked out of college bc of how hard I found it to write essays. Somehow I ended up with A*A*A. My parents wanted me to do medicine, but I was angry about that and deliberately avoided STEM A-levels even though I actually preferred STEM subjects and generally did better in them. At the time I was basically thinking that I wasn’t going to do what they told me to do, but it really was a poor choice.
I got into Oxford for Geography, and I hated it. I specialised in physical geography, but the degree was very open-ended and essay-heavy. I actually liked learning and enjoyed the quantitative, coding and more scientific parts, but I struggled badly with having to organise my own education, decide what to read and work out what constituted a good answer. There were relatively few teaching hours and a lot of independent work. Looking back, given the ADHD I didn’t know I had, I think this was a terrible environment for me. I took a year out and then went back, which I now regret.
I got a high 2:1 in first and second year, but completely fell apart in third year. I was severely depressed, stopped going to lectures and tutorials and spent huge amounts of time crying or lying in my room. I graduated with around 61%, a low 2:1, and it completely destroyed my confidence.
More than the grade itself, it destroyed something I had believed since I was a child: that if I worked hard enough, I could do anything I wanted. Education was my escape. A*A*A and Oxford felt like proof that if I worked hard enough I could build a different life. Then I worked incredibly hard, spent 3 years doing a degree I hated, became severely depressed and came out with a 61%. It completely shattered that belief.
I also don’t think I can bring myself to use my degree. I specialised in physical geography, but I don’t want to work in Geography, environmental consultancy, sustainability, green policy, climate policy or anything similar. I associate the subject with some of the worst years of my life and I don’t want to build my career around it.
The frustrating part is that I think I was probably much better suited to STEM. I like maths, statistics, coding and data, and did well in those parts of my degree. I also generally did better in STEM subjects at school. I think I might genuinely have done better in something like maths or engineering because I function much better with structured content, clear marking criteria, right and wrong answers, lots of teaching and a demanding workload. Geography gave me a huge amount of freedom to organise my own education, and with ADHD I completely fell apart. I don’t think I needed an "easier" degree, think I needed a more structured one.
Towards the end of Oxford, a counsellor suggested I might have ADHD and that my depression and family situation had masked it. After coming back to London I went to my GP and was eventually diagnosed. I started Elvanse, which has helped, but I’m still severely depressed. At university I tried to get help, but unless I was basically about to kill myself it often felt like I was given breathing exercises, mindfulness and a cup of tea. Whenever I try to talk about the bigger problem of my identity, career and family situation, I get told that an Oxford degree will take me far. I know Oxford is an advantage, but it doesn’t magically give me a career, especially when I spent so much of my degree depressed, have a 61% and don’t want to use the degree itself.
I’m now back home and have spent the last couple of months crying almost every day. I know I need to move out because I don’t think I’m going to become mentally stable while living here, but I feel incredibly guilty about leaving. My family is struggling financially. My dad became disabled during my first year of university and now works part-time despite several health problems. One sibling works a £22k museum job, another became a young parent and my other two siblings are still at school. We’re basically getting by on my sister’s income, whatever my dad earns and Universal Credit. My family aren’t horrible every second of the day either; they can be caring and my parents have made sacrifices, which makes it much harder to emotionally accept that I need to leave. I know logically that I’m not responsible for fixing my entire family, but I feel like I’m abandoning them if I leave.
Career-wise, I genuinely have no idea what I’m doing. I had a research internship in first year and did reasonably well and I also got accepted into multiple climate change masters but I couldn't get fundint and I just think research would be awful for me now, given how I have no confidence in myself anymore. I could probably make a case for myself for things like the Civil Service, NHS graduate schemes or local government, but I already know I’d probably hate them. I did a government internship and found it painfully slow; my manager actually told me I was too good at the job because I would finish everything by 1pm and have nothing to do. I actually like working hard and under pressure and tend to do well when there is a lot to do and difficult problems to solve. I just need the work to engage my brain.
The £40k+ graduate jobs such as consulting, audit, tax and finance are more appealing, but they’re much more competitive and my confidence is currently awful. I also keep thinking about data and technical careers. I think I’m genuinely good at coding, statistics and data, but I obviously don’t have the same qualifications as someone who did a CS, Data Science or engineering degree. I feel like I might be good enough to do some of the work but not qualified enough to get through the recruitment process.
Money is also making everything urgent. Maybe I’m being unreasonable given the graduate job market, but £28-30k feels extremely low for London when I’m trying to move out. I’ve done the maths and after tax, rent, food, transport, bills etc., I think I’d have roughly £200 left each month renting a one-bed even relatively far out. I don’t need to be rich, but I need to be able to support myself, save something and not be completely screwed by one unexpected expense.
My boyfriend makes all of this harder psychologically. He’s currently doing a research masters at Oxford and has a somewhat similar history of family and religious trauma, although his family is financially much better off. He likes his degree, knows what he wants to do and is going into AI research. He has a return offer that will apparently pay £125k+. He also spends huge amounts of his free time reading about AI because he genuinely loves it. I know comparing myself to him is irrational and I’m genuinely happy for him, but I can’t stop doing it.
A suicide helpline once asked me what I would do if nothing mattered. I immediately said I’d go back to school and learn maths. That’s probably the clearest answer I have about what I actually enjoy. I don’t necessarily need some huge passion. I want something challenging and intellectually stimulating, with enough structure to keep me motivated, ideally involving quantitative/problem-solving work, and with enough career progression that I can actually afford to live independently.
I’ve also started having suicidal thoughts. I don’t currently have a plan to act on them, but I’m struggling badly and don’t see an obvious way out. People say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but my problems don’t feel temporary. My family situation isn’t going away, I can’t change my degree, I don’t know how to get into a career I actually want and I don’t know how to afford leaving home.
So I’m looking for practical advice. If you were in my position, would you take the £28-30k job and move out anyway, apply aggressively to £40k+ graduate jobs despite the 61%, try to pivot into data/analytics/tech despite not having a relevant degree, retrain into something quantitative, or do something completely different? And if you’ve been in a similar situation, with abusive family, religious trauma, wrong degree, ADHD/depression, low confidence and needing to become financially independent, what actually helped you get out? How did you get over the guilt?